Re: [tlug] LinVDR hardware in Japan

[Marcus Metzler <mocm@example.com>]

Patrick Niessen writes:
 > On Thursday 03 April 2003 16:50, Marcus Metzler wrote:
 > > The Japanese digital TV standard is very different from the European
 > > DVB and the American ATSC. Although the all use MPEG2 transport streams to
 > > convey the audio and video streams, the encapsulation of service
 > > information differs. In addition they all use different modulation
 > > methods to transmit the signal. This requires different frontends
 > > (i.e. tuner and modulator) for each system, which means new
 > > drivers. Furthermore, in the US and Japan you have HDTV content in
 > > digital television, which requires an MPEG decoder that can handle
 > > these resolutions or, if decoded in software, a fast CPU.
 > > Apart from the DVB drivers for the European/Australien cards
 > > (www.linuxtv.org or www.metzlerbros.de) there is the Gnu Radio
 > > Project, which managed to tune, demodulate and decode an ATSC signal
 > > with  the help of a (very expensiv) AD-Converter
 > > (http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/gnuradio.html).
 > > I haven't seen anything for the Japanese standard ( I think it is
 > > called ISDB) yet.
 > 
 > I think ISDB is only for terrestrial, from what I picked up on google.  It 
 > being a PerfecTV subscriber, I also know that this company does not broadcast 
 > any HDTV (wouldn't make sense anyway, as they mainly repeat movies and TV 
 > series that are not available in the HDTV format).  BS sattelite and 
 > BS-Digital are HDTV capable though.

PerfectTV and BS are probably even harder to decode, because there the
transport stream is not quite standard and they use the user data
options of MPEG quite heavily.

 > 
 > I thought that some decoder cards actually support the Japanese standard, but 
 > according to you due to the lack of drivers, the hardware will not be much 
 > use to me.  That brings me to the question if there any other alternative 
 > stream inputs planned for the Linux projects?  If I could use DV via 
 > Firewire, or analog mpeg encoder cards / usb boxes to feed linVRB I could at 
 > least have a settop box for playback ... 

I think they added a plugin for the kfir MPEG2 decoder card and will
probably add one for the Haupauge PVR 250/350 cards as soon as the
driver is usable. As long as your hardware delivers a transport
stream, incorporation into linPVR should not be a problem, anything
else may take longer. You should ask on the vdr mailing list (should
be a link on linuxtv.org). I don't use the program much, because I
usually test the drivers with small test programs, so I am not up to
date on the latest developement.

Marcus

-- 
/--------------------------------------------------------------------\
| Dr. Marcus O.C. Metzler        |                                   |
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| mocm@example.com            | http://www.metzlerbros.de/        |
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